Cooking with Kids

Get kids excited about cooking by involving them in Thanksgiving meal preparation

By Cris Beam

Theres no time like Thanksgiving, when celebrating centers around the fall harvest, to begin breeding pint-sized chefs. Showing kids their way around the kitchen helps them learn healthy eating habits that last a lifetime, says James Moller, M.D., past president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and advisor to the AHAs Kids Cookbook. to the AHAs Kids Cookbook.

Prepare to please. Choose foods that kids like to eat, and dishes they can make themselves or help out with, advises Jane Ruehl, managing editor of Kids Cookbook. On Thanksgiving, let them serve mini-pizzas or turkey nuggets as hors doeuvres, or concoct a side dish for the kids table by stirring cinnamon red hots into heated applesauce.

Let them call it. Have kids name the dishes they make, Ruehl says. It helps them take pride in their creations. Besides, jiggle jelly is a lot more fun to say than cranberry sauce.

Share the duties. Cooking is a process, and its best to involve kids in the parts they enjoy mostmenu-planning, shopping or even cutting out grocery coupons from the paper. For a child too young to take a responsible role, keep a kitchen drawer filled with toy pots and pans for him to play with while you cook.

Make it alluring. Dont try to force your children into cooking as though it were a chore, warns Dr. Moller. Instead, make your kitchen a welcoming place and watch them come to you. If children see how much you enjoy preparing a certain dish, theyll want to pitch in.

Have it your way. If you simply hate to cook, dont sweat it! Instead of making meals from scratch, simulate the job by buying from the takeout sections at the grocery store and adding in a few fresh items. Says Ruehl, This way, kids still see the creativity in cooking. And thats whats important.

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